


questioning my awkward footing

by advantagetexas



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, also theres minor civil war spoilers, its a triple date that ends up only being half of a triple date
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 15:56:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6812194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/advantagetexas/pseuds/advantagetexas
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's just a simple movie date with a few friends, right? How much could go wrong? Well, the answer to that isn't so much "what goes wrong" as it is "what actually goes like we planned it to?" And Whiskey isn't sure that it's all entirely a bad thing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	questioning my awkward footing

**Author's Note:**

> somebody in the comments of my [other fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6802522), (which is kinda a companion to this one? but you can also just read this one by itself!) requested this, so here it is! also, Chowder is the excitable soccer mom for the new tadpoles and you cant tell me otherwise.

“Christopher Suzanne Chowder, if you make me late for this movie I am going to be very upset!” Farmer calls out toward the car that Chowder is currently trying to parallel park. Whiskey thinks to say something about it, but then notices the huge smile on her face.

“None of those are actually my name!” Chowder yells through the closed window, as he finally manages to get the car off the street. It was bad enough that he’d make them all get out of the car so that he could “focus”, but 15 minutes getting the perfectly even park job? Kinda getting ridiculous, especially considering he’d gotten it perfect on the first try. 14 minutes ago.

As he gathers up his stuff from the car, Whiskey tunes back into the conversation, if you could even call it that, that Dex and Nursey seem to just be wrapping up. Somewhere along the line this double date had turned into a triple date, which had required Dex to sit on Nursey’s lap for the duration of the ride to the theater. A fact which he was now leveraging to get what he wanted.

“I’m just saying, we can totally see Keanu next week, but we should see Civil War this week while it’s still new. You owe me that much for calling second shotgun on the way here.”

“You just wanna see the guy that plays T’Challa in a catsuit,” Nursey jokes, and Dex turns bright red almost immediately.

“No I don’t! I’m in it for the engaging story and characters! Shut up!”

“And the ass. C’mon, dude, you can admit it. Everyone’s in it for the ass at least a little bit.”

“I should punch you right now, I really should.”

“Dude, please don’t, it was hard enough not to pop a fucking b-“

“Hey, Whiskey?” Tango’s voice says somewhere to his right. Whiskey turns around to see Tango looking perplexedly at a soda bigger than his head and a container of popcorn the size of a small child. “They said this was a large, but it kinda looks bigger than that. Did I get the wrong thing or something?”

Whiskey just shrugs in response, before having his shoulders clamped down on by a very excited Chowder. Farmer almost knocks him over by accidentally barreling into him from the other direction.

“So what are you guys seeing?” she says cheerily, as if she didn’t just run into him at near full force.

“I thought we were seeing the same thing?” Tango asks, and Chowder shakes his head.

“Dex and Nursey are going to see Civil War, I think? And we’re going to see Zootopia! But like, that’s a kids movie, so we didn’t want to force you into seeing it with us. That’d be hella rude, honestly. Totally not ‘swawesome.”

Tango looks up at the marquee for almost a full minute, before suggesting “We could see the new Batman thing?”

Whiskey just shrugs and nods. He’s already seen it, and it’s not all that good, in fact it’s one of the worst paced movies he’s ever seen, but hey, Tango wants to see it, so sure, why not?

In an instant, Chowder and Farmer seem to disappear into the theater, and Dex and Nursey are nowhere to be found. Whiskey pays for their tickets at the window and then takes the popcorn from Tango so that he can more easily sip from his giant cup of soda. When they get to the actual theater, it’s nearly empty, save for two people in the back, one wearing a Sharks baseball cap over their head, the other with their hair drawn down over their face, looking scarily similar to something out of The Ring. Of course, the effect is completely shattered by the almost comically large Sharks hoodie she has on.

Whiskey sighs internally. Looks like mom and dad are here to chaperone. As much as he wanted to be annoyed, the gesture was actually kind of sweet.

“Should sit in the back row. That way you can look stuff up on IMDB without bothering anyone with your phone light,” Whiskey suggests, and Tango makes an audible gasping noise around the straw of his soda.

“I never would have thought of that! You’re so smart, Whiskey,” he says, in a voice that sounds like melted sunshine. You’d have thought that Whiskey’d just told him how to hang the stars in the sky instead of just an old movie theater trick. He had to admit, it was _kinda_ really adorable.  They picked out a couple seats right in the middle, to get the best angle.

The movie was just as confusing the second time around, but somehow watching it with Tango around didn’t make it so bad. Since he’d seen it before, Whiskey could actually answer some of his questions, and each time he’d have that same wonderstruck look in his eyes. He’d actually gotten lost in Tango’s eyes at one point, and they had both leaned in, only to hear a loud cough from the other side of the theater. From the only other two people _in_ the theater. Real subtle, guys, real subtle. At around an hour in, Whiskey heard a loud snore from his left, and felt Tango’s head drop onto his shoulder.

Was he really asleep? Now? In the middle of one of the set piece moments of the movie?

In his sleep, Tango reached up and pawed at the armrest, stopping when he grabbed a handful of Whiskey’s arm. He made a contented noise in his sleep, and his snoring lessened, just a little. Whiskey smoothed his hair to the side, letting him sleep while the rest of the movie played out. Yep, that ending was still terrible as ever.

As the house lights came on, Tango stirred a little, and Whiskey jolted his shoulder just enough to wake him up fully. He straightened up sleepily, with a yawn. His face turned a shade of bright pink when he realized what’d happened.

“I fell asleep, didn’t I?” he asked, with all the caution of someone asking if they’d done something majorly embarrassing at a frat party.

“Yeah, a little. You didn’t miss much, don’t worry.”

“Sorry, though, for falling asleep on you,” he continues, as Chowder and Farmer try to sneakily creep out of the theater.

“You’re still driving us home, right?” Tango calls out to them, as they pretend not to hear, instead just walking faster out the door. Whiskey smirks, just a little.

“They are still driving us home, right?” Tango repeats, to Whiskey this time. Whiskey just nods. The two of them leave the theater, meeting up with Dex and Nursey out front.

“-unnecessary straight romance, though. Like, seriously, that’s her niece,” Dex is complaining, Nursey just nodding along in total agreement.

“The ‘can you move your seat up’ bit was good thou- oh, hey guys,” Nursey says, finally acknowledging their presence. “How was Batman versus Superman?”

“Bad,” both Whiskey and Tango answer in unison. Dex starts chuckling in the background as Chowder pulls the car up to the curb, beeping the horn at them.

“Second shotgun,” Nursey says, already rushing for the door handle.

“Fuck, middle seat,” Dex says, following after him.

“I guess that means…”Tango starts, before Whiskey cuts him off by taking the last remaining seat. “Hey!” he whines, looking almost genuinely hurt.

“Losers weepers, man,” Dex says, as Tango climbs into the car, sprawling his long legs across the entire back seat, and over everyone’s laps. Whiskey wraps his arms around his middle like a seat belt to keep him from falling to the floorboards.

The trip back to the dorms takes less than 15 minutes, the ride filled with amicable chatter about the movies they’d seen (mixed with a bit of Chowder and Farmer trying to hold to their bluff of going to see Zootopia). When they finally reach the entrance to Tango’s building, he gets out of the car, then pauses for a second. He turns back to the car, giving Whiskey a kiss on the cheek before heading back toward his dorm as the car drives away. For the next minute or so until they reach his dorm, Whiskey’s face is a very bright shade of red.

When they finally do reach his dorm, as he gets out of the car to leave, saying his goodbyes and thank yous, Chowder gets out with him, motioning to Farmer to roll up the windows for a second.

“Hey, Whiskey?” he starts, but for some reason it doesn’t elicit the same warm feeling in his chest that it does when Tango says it. “I just wanted to let you know how ‘swawesome it is that well, you both are just- You're really good together! Is that weird to say? But it's true! You guys are just so nice, and good, and I'm just so happy you're together!" He says all of that, seemingly on the verge of tears of joy, wrapping Whiskey in the world’s tightest bear hug. “I’m so glad you guys didn’t wait three years when you obviously liked each other from the start like some of us did!” He says, finally letting go. He steps aside, and Whiskey can see Dex with his ear pressed against the glass scowling as much as one can when half their face is against a glass pane. Chowder gives him one final quick hug before getting back into the car and driving off. Not a half second later, he gets a text message. He reads it once he’s back to his room and smiles.

_“Hey, so, I looked up the end of the movie that I missed? What does all of this even mean?”_


End file.
